A "Sympathetic" All-American Program: An analysis of the cultural diplomacy aspects of Alfredo Antonini and Marian Anderson’s 1956 concert in Oslo

Abstract

On September 19th in 1956, the African American singer Marian Anderson was standing on the stage of the University Aula in Oslo. Her eyes shut as she sang the Romance “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The Italian-American director Alfredo Antonini conducted the Oslo Philharmonic with dynamic hand gestures. The following days, newspapers wrote of a mesmerized audience, moved by Anderson’s soul-stirring and powerful song, as well as her humble and sincere appearance. In a time of racial segregation in the American south and international discomfort by relentless waves of American popular culture, as well as the ever-present shadow of the Cold War, the finetuned and subtle musical art of Marian Anderson was quite remarkable to its Norwegian audience. This made her performance all the more valuable for actors and institutions working strategically to influence popular impressions and values through cultural diplomacy. As such, the dignified performance by the American singer on stage in Oslo was a focal point in a Cold War Cultural war – a quiet eye of a raging storm. This ‘storm’, that is the strategic battles and cultural tensions ‘whirling around’ the concert, is the focus of this thesis. This thesis argues that the Anderson and Antonini concert, which went under the name of UNESCO, was a focal point of different cultural diplomacy agendas. This was partly a result of the transnational work of two Norwegians, namely Klaus Egge and Jon Embretsen, who had built extensive social networks in the US with the aim of promoting Norwegian music across the Atlantic. The Americans involved in the planning of the concert, Harold Spivacke, David Cooper and Alfredo Antonini, had agendas that to some extent were in line with the agendas of governmental cultural diplomacy actors in the US. I argue that this blend of private and governmental agendas, and the Norwegian cooperation and engagement, provides an interesting starting point for a further discussion of the complexities of cultural diplomacy in Norway during the Early Cold War.